1821

[vivdunstan]

Just encountered this example of appalling handwriting from an era when it's usually very clear to read. This is from Hawick parish kirk session minutes for 1821. Luckily the person who wrote this only writes a few pages. But still mega ouch. This is remarkably bad for this period. Incredibly poorly defined letters.

Comments

[andrewducker]

Good Lord, I'm glad I don't have to transcribe that!

[vivdunstan]

Transcribing would be easier than what I'm trying to do, which is just skip through looking for key names etc! At least with transcribing I can almost read it ok, if I take a big run at it. But it's far more work than I should have to do for a quick skim of content. And normally this era is nicely written.

[a_cubed]

The lack of crossing on the "t"s is terrible. I can see it begins "The {something beginning with S} having met and carefully considered their accounts", but then it gets into closely written lines with the "g" from having being completely in the line. Yuck!

[vivdunstan]

It's making some 1500s documents I've got to decipher look easy ...

[watervole]

I guess he may have been writing quickly if it was minutes... But presumably other minute takers did a lot better.

but I'm not finding it that hard to read, interestingly. (well, I can't get all of it in a quick skim, but most of the payments are clear)

[vivdunstan]

If I take a run at it it's not really that bad, at least in the first para, though the second para deteriorates a lot. But it's remarkable for its time as an extremely poor form of writing in a document like this. And since I was mainly hoping just to skim through quickly looking through key names or topics I'm not really appreciating it. Though if reading it as a whole it would be better. But more effort than I wanted.